CLEVELAND, Ohio - Though 5,000 miles away, the events in
Ukraine have had a powerful impact on the Northeast Ohio community. With more
than 45,000 Ohioans who claim Ukrainian ancestry -- most in the Cleveland area -- it's
no surprise.

Now the political crisis is shining a
spotlight on one of Cleveland's most unique cultural institutions, the 62-year-old
Ukrainian Museum-Archives in Tremont.

Founded in 1952 by immigrants to the
area, the museum that now comprises two separate buildings has never been more
in the spotlight. The talk even turned
to politics at their recent Easter Bazaar of hand-crafted Ukrainian pysanky
eggs.

"In a
perverse way, that drove some of our traffic, people coming in to learn
more about Ukraine," says UMA director Andy Fedynsky, whose father was a
founding member. "We had the regulars
who come every year, the people who appreciate the art and people who were just
curious about Ukraine."

Fedynsky also says they have been
getting many more speaking requests from area organizations, and more students
have also been asking to access the impressive archives. Housing one of the
largest collection of Ukrainian documents in the world – dating to
pre-World War I and up to the Soviet era and beyond -- the UMA has been courted by Harvard University and the New York Public
Library, among others, but has chosen to keep their treasure here.

"We're not just about Easter eggs and
embroidery," explains Fedynsky. "Our next challenge is to broaden
awareness about the archives. We have already been working on cataloging it to
make it more accessible."

In
light of the current situation, the museum's current exhibit is also startlingly
relevant. Now on view, the Tara's Shevchenko exhibition honors the
bicentennial of the birth of the man is who widely regarded as Ukraine's most
famous ethnographer, linguist, poet and painter. The exhibit includes reproductions of many of
Shevchenko's poems and paintings to illustrate his life story, and a bust of
the by avant-garde artist Alexander Archipenko. But the center of the exhibit
is one of the museum's most important pieces, an oil painting of Ukrainian salt
merchants signed by Shevchenko.

"We've
had that painting since 1978," says Fedynsky. "That painting reflects the history
of the museum. When we got it it, it was just a handful of old folks running
the place, and we have grown so much. .... Because Tremont was such a screwy area
at the time when we first got the painting, with so much crime, we had to wait
for insurance reasons to have our own facility to be able to provide security
and cameras."

Fedynsky
is referring to the UMA's stand-alone brick building
built a decade ago behind the original century house on Kenilworth Avenue that
still contains many of the permanent cultural exhibits and gift store.

The
Shevchenko show is in this back building. The painting, which was donated to the
museum in 1978 by a private collector, will be on display with the rest of the
exhibit through June.

"It's
a very significant piece," says Fedynsky. While signed by Shevchenko, it has not been
authenticated, though the UMA director does not doubt its heritage.

"To get it authenticated now, we would need to send it to Ukraine to be personally
inspected," he says. "And that's just not possible with what's going on."

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